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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29106468">It's Easy to Believe, But Hard to Forget</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painted_LadyBones/pseuds/Painted_LadyBones'>Painted_LadyBones</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Music RPF, Rock Music RPF, The Rolling Stones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst, Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Immortality, Multiple Settings, Music, One Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:15:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29106468</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painted_LadyBones/pseuds/Painted_LadyBones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He has wandered the earth since time immemorial, plucking at strings and hanging back on the edge of countless societies, without a place in the world or in death. When he becomes Keith in 1960s London, it's only meant to last six months. Instead, it lasts sixty years. </p><p>(AU where Keith Richards is an immortal string player who never settles down for long until he meets Mick, Charlie, Ronnie, and Bill. He'll finally experience a real life, and the grief that comes with it).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bill Wyman &amp; Keith Richards, Charlie Watts &amp; Keith Richards, Mick Jagger &amp; Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood &amp; Keith Richards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It's Easy to Believe, But Hard to Forget</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>          The harsh, tinny pluck of the lyre rang through the marketplace, but few seemed to take notice. It had done so a hundred, a thousand days before, and it would just as many days hence. In a city whose air was filled with more languages than birds, a new face was hardly remarkable, and even old ones, ones that had been around for decades on end, could blend into the scenery like a tile in a mosaic. Sticking around for a few more years than is strictly possible isn’t such a bad mistake to make, in an empire.</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>          I like cities, as a rule. They’re an easier place to blend into, somewhere where people take anonymity for granted and grant it to others without much thought. America had been interesting and such, a couple centuries of good fun, but much as I liked the music by the time one war had come and gone and another was on the horizon, being closer to the action appealed. Why not London? I had fond memories of it, after all.<br/>
          Blitzes, shortages, men missing limbs, children on trains and planes for another, newer world, and a country that held its breath for six very long years. Even for me, long years. Filling in where I could, taking a role without taking an identity, but it was war time and no one much cared. A gently aging man with unusual strength was a welcome asset.<br/>
          Wartime dearth didn’t exactly give way to peacetime plenty. More years of rations and gray suits and rebuilding, people learning how to go on with their lives. Color appeared to be leeching back in, though. It was easy to move flats and stop with the silver, whistle at birds in mini skirts and rejoice in the sound of Elvis on the radio.<br/>
          People do, on occasion, like to give an identity to strangers. I had taken a name, and a half way interesting job in Holborn, doing graphic design. Easy and cheap to live further out, in Dartford. There was no rhyme or reason to it, the shortish, skinny boy with a stack of records under one arm and a Hayek book under the other catching my eye at the drizzly near end of ‘61.<br/>
         “Hey, some nice records you got there.”<br/>
         “Oh, ta. You like Muddy Waters?”<br/>
         “Love ‘im.”<br/>
         “I thought I was the only one in this whole island! Have we met before? As kids, I mean?”<br/>
         “Might have done. I’m Keith.”<br/>
         “We, did, I’m sure. I know there was a Keith I was mates with ages ago, big ears and an even bigger cowboy hat. We moved, though.”<br/>
         “Well, I’ll believe ya. Where’s your stop?”<br/>
         “Holborn, I’m at the LSE. You?”<br/>
         “Just the same.”</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>          Sometimes I wondered about the little kid who he remembered, how similar I was to this person I had never been. Most of the time, though, I spent getting used to this new guy. Mick, with the shaggy brown hair and ridiculously big lips, always intent on his schoolbooks even in the squalid flat we now rented together. There were other guys as well, a blond guitarist who already had a load of kids, a bass player with an eye for birds, and a quiet drummer who had just joined us in the bedsit. Liked him. He wasn’t keen on Elvis, or even rock and roll, but he had a mean high hat and a wicked sense of humor. Steady, too. In rhythm and life.<br/>
          Didn’t expect Mick to drop out, to give his full time to this little band. I had spent all my life strumming strings, of course, and it felt like home. But it also felt like time might already have gone on too long. A year, then two. We had a name, and then fans, and then music of our own.<br/>
          I guess, in the end, I got back to America like I had been thinking about for a while without even having to plan it myself.</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>          Damn whatever the hell being a rockstar was. Damn Mick and Charlie and Ronnie and Bill and the lot of them for being so much fun, for being brothers without even trying. Damn the pretty girls with clever laughs and the booze and the drugs. Damn how good the music felt. Damn me for staying.<br/>
          We were never in one place for more than a week or so, it seemed. Endless concerts, and tours, and recording sessions. A couple years in France to dodge the taxman, and records that people raved about. Stadiums full of young people that wanted to sing along, and a mad kind of craze for the music that we were making.<br/>
The bright lights were intoxicating, as good as any cocaine, and the high of the music never seemed to wear off. Recording too. Standing in that little sound booth, passing back and forth a fifth of bourbon and belting out the backing vocals and the lead in the same go. Even just strumming around after a couple of days of long sessions.<br/>
          This was not what I had planned, what I had planned on was only meant to last a couple of months. Seventeen years was more than a couple of months, it was the solid start of an individual life. It had been a very long time since I had built anything approximating a real life, never mind one where my face was plastered all about and my antics were becoming the stuff of legend. Who cares, though, at 36 when there’s music and time and fame stretched out before you like a carpet?</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>         Easy as it might be to get by without a definite name or place for ages, personality stuck. Fear ate at my gut like leaking acid, and Mick’s desire to stretch his wings brought out that acid, letting me spew it somewhere other than at myself. Not that we hadn’t had fights before, for all the time we had been together. Not that he didn’t give as good as he got, in the press and in person.<br/>
          The music stopped, between us, and I went on with my own, trying not to think of hair that was going gray. I wasn’t ready to slink back into the shadows, and, besides, that freeze couldn’t last forever. Watching the steady one start to sink, though, perhaps before it would have put me in mind of running, but now I wanted to stay even more fiercely. Pick him up off the ground, put him on his seat, and get him straight. Get the whole outfit back running, so that he would never have to fear again, so that we could have the man we loved back.<br/>
Maybe it’s not quite the same as what it once was, but I treasure being back up on that stage with my ragtag pirate crew as much as I did three decades ago, maybe more. Some things I would almost give an arm to have back, some relationships unchanged by too much ego and fear, but I’ll cherish what I can get.<br/>
          The drums start their savage beat, the guitars join in the ferocious call, a voice draws them all together. It’s an overriding love.</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>          I’ve become an expert, over too many years to count, at drawing lines in my face, leeching the color from my hair, and allowing my hands to gnarl. No one would ever suspect that time does not touch me. Time does it for the others, though.<br/>
         Two months in, was the limit I set for myself, and sixty years came in a snap. Songs and photographs and books and paintings. Memories. They were more years than I ever could have counted on getting, I would be greedy to want more. I was greedy. I am.<br/>
          No one was the worst. Each was the worst. No matter if I expected it or not, whether it came by phone or I was sitting at the bedside. Pulling pieces out of my own soul would have wrenched out less anguish. I had become a man again, and with their departure, it was time to return to my old and familiar status. There had been other friends over the ages, of course, other lives. None like this, though. Nothing as full or as mad or as beautiful.<br/>
         <em> I watched you suffer a dull aching pain. Now you've decided to show me the same. No sweeping exit or offstage lines.</em> Didn’t we write that, once? He certainly showed me the truth in those words. They all did, that rowdy lot of outlaw bastards. Those brothers.<br/>
           Only right, for me to go peacefully as well.</p><p>◃◃◃</p><p>          The mellow hum of chords, and a voice that seems too raspy for the body it's in, flow out of a guitar and its companion, into the buzzing, glass plated, million and more man city. A few people might flick coins, but most pay no mind to a scruffy street musician singing in a familiar but foreign tongue. There had been ones like him when the streets were made of dirt and an emperor sat on a throne, and there would be ones like him still when the earth had spun a million times.</p>
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